


An Ounce

by calcetineys



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Ambigous Ending, Background Steo, Character Study, Hayden & Stiles Solidarity, Hayden Centric, Introspection, Multi, One-Sided Relationship, chimera pack, next to no dialogue, trying to fill in what I wished they'd shown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 17:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18922126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcetineys/pseuds/calcetineys
Summary: Hayden sees it, what it is to have all that power, and not an ounce of control.





	An Ounce

Hayden meets Tracy when the older girl is asleep, but she doesn’t realize this at first. 

No one did.

Still, Hayden feels that she sees much of what Tracy will later show herself to be. Because Hayden’s first response is to get her out of the classroom, in case there actually is a fire. It seems like the decent thing to do, but it’s more than that. Tracy had been hunched over, looking pained and Hayden hadn’t wanted to leave her there, though she obviously didn’t belong in that class. 

She probably should have been scared. She was, she can admit, because what she saw, the broken desk, the tears in the other girl’s clothing, the clawed hands and feet- didn’t make sense. She didn’t realize it at the time, but that was her introduction to the supernatural world. 

In the moment though, she saw someone that needed help. 

No.

That’s not quite right.

She saw someone that needed someone to take care of her.

It’s not an unfamiliar concept to Hayden. She had to learn to take care of herself earlier than most. It had become ingrained in her, was a part of her even before this paranormal mess. Her first instinct is to do what’s needed to keep her sister, herself and then whoever else might come next, safe. In that order. She could trust Valerie to put her first, that’s how they operated. 

It didn’t often occur to her to resent that dynamic. 

But right then, Val was safe because she wasn’t there. Hayden herself was fine, because she was able bodied and able to get herself out of the building. 

So that left whoever else might come next.  
\--

The fact that Tracy dies seems, for a long while after Hayden finds out, small and far removed. Hayden’s used to hearing about deaths, though Val isn’t much for shoptalk. It’s just a reality of living with an officer of the law. She feels a moment of something close to sadness, because the other girl was so young.

What’s surprising though, is that Val doesn’t seem to know about Tracy’s death. No one in the Sheriff’s department does, though it happens the night of some kind of altercation at the station (so the official report says), though she heard about it from the Sheriff’s son. He hadn’t meant to tell her, but Stiles Stilinski is as loud as he is callous, and hearing about the dead girl spoken of so- insensitively just reminds Hayden of why she and Stiles aren’t friends. 

She files away the use of the phrase ‘lizard girl’ for later. For later, when she had the capacity to think about how her arm had somehow healed from _claws_ during the walk from the classroom to the bathroom.

\--

Mason, for all his poor judgment that led him to being friends with Liam, is actually a decent person, so no, Hayden doesn’t mind letting him into the club. 

That aside, she starts to regret it when his friend spills all the drinks she has to sell and then tries to make up for it with a few crumpled singles. 

Remind her never to do anything nice again. 

But she wonders, in a quiet voice that won’t leave her alone, if she even needs to worry about the money anymore. If her body even needs the medicine anymore. Because try as she might, she can’t forget the pain of those claws, nor the moment the pain faded. She can’t let it go.

She’s not good at letting things go. 

\--

Liam insists on paying her back, because he has a strange complex about settling debts. Though she says that she doesn’t want his money, doesn’t want anything to do with him, it’s not so much his mistakes that make her uneasy. It’s the way he tries to take care of them. 

Tries to take care of her problems. 

It plays out like a movie, where the misconceptions are replaced by understanding, and she doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like the way he’s not the inconsiderate asshole she’s always made him out to be. She doesn’t like the way he’s actually kind. 

She could deal with all that though, if it weren’t for the goddamned way he tries to take care of _her_. Because that’s not something she could handle. She’s long past the time when she had someone do that, and it was one of the hardest things she’s ever had to accept. She can’t go back to that time, or that mentality. 

And she doesn’t want to.  
\--

It gets worse when Liam’s insistence on helping her collides with all the strange _things_ that she’s unable to ignore and unable to accept. 

All with a stupid glow stick. 

Liam tries to explain, and she doesn’t want to hear it, because it makes _sense_. She doesn’t want her world to change anymore than it already has. She doesn’t want to let go of the way the world made sense. 

And then Liam throws all that out the window when he morphs his face into that _thing_ , and when Hayden punches him, it’s one part fear and one part resentment.

\--

Hayden accepts Liam and his _alpha’s_ help, mainly because she can’t exactly _not_ accept the fact that three strange figures just chased her down, or the fact that she now has claws of her own. 

Scott is the eerie definition of a do-gooder, but he reminds Hayden of Mason’s innate goodness, so it’s not as hard to let him help her as she would have expected. She’s not an idiot. There’s no way she can handle this on her own. But she doesn’t want them to handle this for her. She also doesn’t want them to help her because of the way Liam’s started to look at her. 

The idea of a pack, like they’re actual animals, is all kinds of weird. But if that’s what she needs to survive, fine. 

She’s just not going to base her membership on someone else’s romantic ideas. 

It doesn’t help that she doesn’t feel the same way. 

Because Liam may be kinder than she thought, but she doesn’t feel that way about him. She’s quick to put a stop to it, and Liam responds with, “Oh. I- I mean, that’s…okay? We’re still going to help you.”

She can see why Mason is friends with him.  
\--

Hayden understands the struggles that come with taking care of other people. That doesn’t mean she’s happy about the phrase ‘somebody has to be the bait’ being targeted at _her_. 

But she has bigger issues to deal with, because this is so much bigger and darker than she ever expected. Because she understands that few people are as willing to try like Scott, and if he feels those measures are necessary…

So instead she focuses on the fact that she doesn’t have her medicine. 

With chimeras dying without fail, she’s not taking any chances.

It probably doesn’t matter when she ends up being the bait, without them even catching their prey.

\--

She wishes she could block out what the Doctors do to her, but she knows she’ll remember the pain, the fear. Fear that doubles when Zach tells her what her death will look like. He looks like death himself, and there’s nothing she can do when he gets dragged away from their prison. She can’t help him.

She can’t help anyone. 

Then there’s Theo, with what she’ll later think of as impeccable timing, and he’s breaking down the electric fence to free them. Everything is fuzzy from there, because whatever the Doctors had done to her is really making itself known. She’s in and out on the ride back, and then she’s laying on a couch in a place that seems vaguely familiar, but Liam and Scott and Mason and Malia are there, so it’s okay, right?  
\--

It’s not okay, not when she starts bleeding mercury. 

Her first thought is of Val, because this will kill her. Then she realizes she’s going to die. And it seems obvious, but she realizes just how much she doesn’t want to die. She thought she understood that when she had her kidney transplant, and everyday that she worked and worked and worked to pay for her medication. 

But with that, there was always the chance of survival. 

That’s gone now. 

Hayden wonders what to do. She thinks about going to Scott, but there’s this fear in her that he won’t be able to help, not with this. And if Scott McCall, savior of Beacon Hills, can’t save her, then who can? She feels like a child, hiding under the blankets so the danger can’t find her. But that’s not the point of it, really. 

It’s so she can’t see the danger. 

She doesn’t want to know that Scott can’t help her. But… oh, she doesn’t want to have to take care of this anymore. She wants someone to come in with a brilliant rescue, and she’ll deal with her shifting worldview, because she’ll still be alive to have one. She wants Val to be the only strong one, to protect her. She wants her parents, like she hasn’t let herself admit except in the quiet moments where she looks around their empty home and asks _why?_

She wants someone to take care of her. 

But there’s no one that can. 

So she does what she always does, and she does it herself.  
\--

But there are some things that no one can take care of, and this god-damned nightmare is one of them. Hayden feels it, the dying, and she’s so angry. She wants to scream and scream and scream, because she’s fought to live for as long as she can remember, fought to breathe through losing her family, through losing her health, through trying to rebuild both. 

She wants to pull Liam close, so he’ll hear her when she tells him to give those damned Doctors all the hell they’ve unleashed on this pit of a town, but she’s so tired. And Scott and his aren’t ones for revenge. Where’s Stiles when you need him?

She’s so angry because everything has been stolen from her, and they’re _hers._ Her life, her health, her agency- hasn’t she done enough to keep them? She’d suffer through this hell mouth of a town if only she got to keep them. 

But it’s not an option. 

They try, to at least keep her life for her. Everything gets hazy, but she’s aware of someone new, someone with a soothing voice and practitioner’s hands, and Hayden wonders who they’ve called in to help her. She doesn’t bother telling whoever it is that it’s useless, because she doesn’t want it to be useless. She doesn’t want to give up the only thing she has left. 

But eventually, it’s clear to her that she’s about to lose everything, and the only thing that’s going to be left of her is Valerie. And she wants to hold her, to be held. She knows it’ll be hell on her sister to see her die, but it’ll be even worse for Val to know that she was alone. 

And if she can’t have anything else she wants, she at least wants the one constant she’s ever had. She wants to know there’s one thing that hasn’t been taken from her…  
\--

When she wakes up, it’s not to Valerie or pain, which is what she’s used to waking up to whenever her health fails. She’s not at home, or the hospital. For some reason, she’s outside, slumped against a tree stump.

And she’s alive. 

Because of the boy standing in front of her, telling her that he’s her alpha, and that they’re coming with him. She’s alive… 

She goes with him and the others like her.  
\--

He takes them underground. Hayden realizes at some point that the boy is Theo, but he seems different. She’s not sure if it’s because everything seems different, or if it’s just him. She feels like she should be upset that everything has changed again, but mostly she just thinks about the fact that she’s _alive._

It keeps her from questioning what happened. Why Theo’s not with Scott anymore. Why he’s building his own pack. The answer comes readily either way, when Theo explains that he’s the first of the Dread Doctors’ experiments, the first success. 

So. 

Stiles was right. A lot of things make more sense now. 

Theo tells them that they’re a pack now, and that nothing is more important than pack. Hayden’s not sure how much of his speech she believes, but she knows that he’s the reason she’s alive. He’s the one to pull off that brilliant rescue she’d been hoping for. He’s the one that managed to do _anything._ The fact that she doesn’t quite trust him, that nothing about this situation feels right, it doesn’t matter so much next to that.  
\--

Well, one thing makes her feel normal enough, and that’s talking to Tracy. Maybe it’s just because she hadn’t known the other girl well before they both died, but Hayden feels more like herself when they’re together, like there was something that had potential in her previous life that still has that same potential now. 

That’s probably not a good sign. Because she’s looking at Tracy while Tracy’s staring at Theo. 

Hayden’s feelings aside, oh, that’s just such a bad idea for Tracy to have. 

Especially when Theo doesn’t look at her except to give her orders. Oh, he makes it look pretty, sure, but they’re orders all the same. Hayden wonders what Tracy was like before, that she takes so easily to what Theo gives her. It’s sad, because what he offers isn’t even the scraps of real emotion. 

No, oddly enough the closest he’s come to showing that is when he left the morning after he brought them back, saying something about running an errand.

Hayden can’t bring herself to care where he actually went.  
\--

Valerie is furious when she shows up at home again, and Hayden’s too tired to argue, or to do anything but hold her back when Val crushes her in an embrace that makes Hayden feel almost alive.

She knows it’s not her fault, but guilt still weighs on her chest at making her sister worry. But… it’s still better than Val watching her little sister die. And Hayden’s going to make sure she never has to. 

Still, dragging her along on her shifts is unnecessary, considering Val is a Sheriff’s deputy. It doesn’t exactly scream safety. She thinks maybe Val is just afraid that she’ll turn around and Hayden will be gone.

It’s a valid fear, if only because it’s what Valerie has had to live through.

So she stifles her sighs and goes along with Val. And Hayden thinks she’s got herself oriented to this new life. 

And then she’s being chased by a giant, shadowy monster. 

Of course. 

She listens to her sister and runs. 

And runs and runs, and somehow she escapes. She thinks she should tell Theo, because isn’t this something he’d want to know? 

Be angry at not knowing.  
\--

Theo’s idea of pack bonding is… unsettling. And so much about this situation is already unsettling. Hayden feels something in her gut twist as Tracy gushes about Theo helping her ‘get closure’. Hayden knows herself well even to enough to admit that she can be petty when she’s angry, but what Theo helped Tracy do is _not_ getting closure.  
\--

Hayden may never have been friends with Stiles, but they’ve always understood each other. Because they knew what it is to see their only family risk their lives every day. What it is to watch the only person they have leave for work and wonder if they are going to come back. 

So yes, Hayden has always understood some part of Stiles, even when first meeting him and being put off by how much he talked, and the strange things he said, and his insensitive way of looking at the world. And she means _insensitive._ He had years on Hayden on having a family member on the force, and he’d become desensitized to the violence, the death and the suffering. 

She wonders now if he was that way even before. 

She doesn’t think he’s a bad person, but he was calloused against the pain, and part of Hayden shied away from him because he was everything she didn’t want to be and everything she thought she would become. She looked at him and saw a hard shell with nothing but fragility and raw emotion underneath and she didn’t want to be like that. 

Because once that shell broke, it broke and there’d be no other defense. No, she wasn’t opposed to having her own shield, but under that, she’d be hard under that too. 

Hayden finds another disturbing similarity between herself and Stiles as she looks at his interactions with Theo. It seems Corey isn't the only one that's invisible, not when Stiles never looks away from Theo. Because the way he looks at Theo is what Hayden imagines she looks like when she looks at Tracy. 

Theo doesn’t realize, and she’s not surprised, because her ‘alpha’ is becoming unhinged, paranoid and distracted by his pursuit of power. Hayden knows a sinking ship when she sees one, and this ‘pack’ is not going to survive intact. 

Not when most of its members are power hungry and already drunk off what they can do already. She sees it in every act of aggression Tracy is more than happy to commit at Theo’s suggestion, in the way his eyes glimmer, the way he _smiles_ as Tracy and Josh slip further and further from the people they once were. Hayden sees it, what it is to have all that power, and not an ounce of control.

Theo’s better off in that regard than Tracy, but he’s slipping too. At the very least, he isn’t able to actually do anything about the Doctors or the Beast. He doesn’t know how to handle Scott’s pack, and he can’t even see that one of its members is looking at him the way Stiles is. She can’t blame Theo, because whatever Stiles is feeling doesn’t _look_ like much. It’s not pretty, or gentle or tender, and she can already tell that he’s not going to try to save Theo, because Stiles sees what she sees. 

They both know how this kind of love ends.


End file.
